Thursday in the Park

It was a beautiful, sunny spring-like day today. The temperature must have been in the low 50's and sunshine was abundant in the afternoon. I got to the park about 2 pm and stopped at the Boreal Owl tree first. There were about 10-15 people gathered there including Lloyd Spitalnik and Peter Post. The owl was barely visible so, after chatting with Peter, Lloyd and a few out-of-town birders I went over to Bow Bridge to see what Lincoln was up to.


I never made it that far because there were two Red-tailed Hawks in a tree on Cherry Hill: a juvenile and possibly Lola. Seems they were fighting over a squirrel carcass and the both eventually flew off. I staked out the carcass and about fifteen minutes and the juvenile landed on the ground next to the carcass and began eating it. At one point a squirrel came up to the hawk (on the other side of the fence) as was watchng the hawk eat. I was shooting from about 50 feet away but a crowd soon gathered and there was one guy who was about ten feet away from the hawk. I tried to shoo him away but he was a tourist and had a hard time understanding that this was not the Central Park petting zoo. The hawk was quite tolerant of him and when he left I moved a little closer and positioned myself so I could stop people from getting too close. My only worry was that the squirrel was not a fresh kill and had died from rat poisoning. Only last week an adult female had been found dead at Bethesda Terrace and the necropsy done by Dr. Ward Stone revealed the hawk had died of rat poisoning of a type not used by the CP staff.